The global server market continues to grow with Linux servers playing a major role: for the fifth time in succession, Linux server business achieved double-figure growth in the second quarter of 2007.

Statistics published by US market researchers Gartner and IDC reveal the trend. All told, manufacturers increased turnover by 5 percent (Gartner) or 6 percent (IDC) in the second quarter of 2007. This is equivalent to a total of US$ 13 billion. According to IDC Linux servers account for US$ 1.8 billion of this figure, representing 19 percent growth in servers with the free operating system pre-installed in the second quarter. The market share rose from 12.1 in the same quarter last year to 13.6 percent this year. Microsoft is still the market leader with a share of 38.2 percent, US$ 5 billion turnover, and a similar growth rate of 18.7 percent. The loser would seem to be Unix with turnover down by 4 percent and a market share of 31.7 percent.

Researchers from both Gartner and IDC see IBM on top of hardware vendors with a turnover of some US$ 4 billion, closely foolowed by HP (US$ 3.7 billion) and Sun with US$ 1.7 billion. Big Blue was able to maintain its market share with its System x, z and System p servers. HP's big sellers are the ProLiant and Blade Servers, while Sun scores with its T1000 and T2000 systems, and dominates the Unix market with Solaris. Dell improved turnover by 20 percent but stays in fourth place.

According to market researchers, growth was driven by products for the X86 platform; at the same time, researchers identified increased demand for more storage. A strong underlying demand for increased capacity and new applications is driving volume growth in spite of potential inhibitors like virtualization and economic concerns." says Jeffrey Hewitt, Vice President for Market Research with Gartner. Competitor IDC sees new IT tasks and a strong wave of regular hardware updates as the driving force behing growth.

IT giant IBM closed its third quarter 2007 September 30 with turnover up by seven percent compared to the same period last year. Income in the third quarter rose by six percent to around US$ 2.4 billion.

With a 1.2% growth, blade servers are leading all others in the market segment that may have made strides in the past. But the IDC research firm sees light at the end of the tunnel: since the bleak period that ended 2008, the revenue curve for the worldwide server market is trending upwards again.